


Chasing Whiskey With You

by chaila



Category: Fringe, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Genre: Crossover, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-30
Updated: 2011-01-30
Packaged: 2017-10-19 03:32:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/196402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaila/pseuds/chaila
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Olivia doesn't want to go home. Set sometime post Fringe 3x09, "Marionette" and TSCC 2x22, "Born to Run."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chasing Whiskey With You

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted [here](http://chaila43.livejournal.com/124034.html) on LJ.

At the end of the day, Olivia can't bring herself to go back to her apartment. It still doesn't feel like home; she's not sure it ever will again. She slips into her favorite bar instead. It's not exactly a dive so it doesn't attract the local college kids but it's not hip or upscale enough to attract a tourist crowd. It's a quiet neighborhood spot and, most importantly, the regulars know she likes to be left to herself.

"Dunham!" Tom hails her as she takes a stool at the end of the bar, "I haven't seen you in here for weeks." He pours her a whiskey and sets it in front of her. Olivia gives him a quick smile. It seems this place, at least, is still hers, still untainted by conversations she didn't have, jokes she wasn't there for.

"Work," she says, tipping her glass at him in acknowledgment before taking a long drink. She relaxes a little as it slides down her throat. Broyles ordered her to take the following day off and for once she didn't argue. She's tired of everyone watching her for signs of an imminent breakdown. She has no one to get home to. Maybe she'll just get drunk. At the very least, maybe then she'll be able to sleep in the bed that holds too many memories that aren't actually hers.

A man in a suit--the kind that screams of finance and not detective work, though Olivia knows he could never spot the difference--sidles up to the bar next to her. "Hey honey," he says, "Can I buy you a drink?" He's a regular here too and he tries this about once a month. He's told her his name several times but she can't ever be bothered to remember it.

"No thanks," she says, indicating her fresh drink and looking away. "I'm not really looking for company." He looks like he's about to make an issue out of it when a dark-haired woman walks up to the bar on the other side of him. He compares the newcomer to Olivia's disinterest and clearly decides the unknown might be a better bet. Olivia hears him make the same offer to the new woman, complete with the pet name. The brunette doesn't even bother to answer him. She silently gives him a cold stare that sends him slinking away as if he'd been kicked. Evaluating the woman's expression, Olivia thinks he might have been lucky to escape with only metaphorical bruises.

Sarah Connor doesn't know what she's doing here. She doesn't know what she's doing on the East Coast chasing a wisp of a lead on Kaliba, she doesn't know what she's doing in this new world without a replacement plan now that she has no son to protect and prepare. She doesn't even know what she's doing in this bar. At least she can answer that last question immediately. She orders a whiskey.

She throws the first one back in one gulp. This is something she rarely did when she had John, when she always needed her awareness unclouded and her reflexes sharp. She closes her eyes briefly as the whiskey burns her throat. She sits down on the stool and waves for the bartender to refill her glass. "Better make this one a double," she says. When it comes, she sips it slowly.

The blond woman next to Sarah has been appraising her with a practiced eye since she got here. Sarah reciprocates: black suit, long ponytail, sturdy boots, a calculating gaze. Her face is mildly curious but disinterested at the same time; she seems acutely aware of her surroundings.

"You a cop?" Sarah asks.

Olivia smirks and shakes her head vaguely. "Something like that," she says, unnerved but amused.

Sarah's far from home, a little confused, maybe a little lonely. It must be making her a little reckless too because she doesn't get up and leave right then despite all her instincts about cops. She takes a slow breath and a long drink. She wishes she had a cigarette.

"Olivia," the blond woman says by way of introduction.

Sarah thinks for a long moment. "Sarah," she says, inclining her head in greeting. They don’t shake hands. "Did you win?" she continues, indicating a fading abrasion on Olivia's forehead.

Olivia carefully considers her answer. "Too early to tell," she says.

"Isn't it always," Sarah agrees.

They lapse into a silence that both seem comfortable in. Olivia looks Sarah over again out of the corner of her eye. "What brings you to Boston?" she asks.

"What makes you think I don't live here?" Sarah shoots back.

Olivia lifts an eyebrow at her. "What brings you to Boston?"

Killer machines, Sarah thinks, lost boys, fruitless leads and a war I don't know how to stop. "Business," she says, with half a smile.

Olivia pointedly takes in her faded jeans and leather jacket but doesn't comment.

They sit together and sip whiskey, making a little small talk but mostly silent. Nobody but the rejected suit, glowering from across the bar, pays any attention to them. Olivia thinks Sarah is just as aware of that fact as she is.

Olivia slowly unwinds a little. It feels good to focus on something new, someone wholly unconnected to the last few weeks. Just for tonight, she wants to think about something other than the promise she made to stop an inevitable war and save two universes, and something other than the fact that somebody else lived her life for weeks and nobody noticed.

When Sarah slips off her stool in search of the bathroom, Olivia watches her go. The glint of gunmetal at her back, just beneath her jacket, catches Olivia’s eye.

When Sarah comes back, Olivia picks up their drinks. "Someplace more private?" she suggests, indicating a small table in a relatively quiet corner of the bar. Sarah considers the proposal, then nods a silent acceptance.

There's an unspoken fight over who gets the seat facing the door and who has to sit with her back to the room. Sarah wins. Olivia still knows without looking around that there are about 30 people in the bar, mostly grouped in twos or threes, with a few lone drinkers at the bar. The suit left twenty minutes ago. Nobody else is paying them any attention.

Olivia slips her hand underneath her jacket, takes her gun out of its holster and calmly sets it on the table between them. "I'll show you mine," she says, meeting Sarah’s eyes.

Sarah makes an involuntary movement as if to get up and go, but she doesn't. She returns Olivia's stare and after a long moment, quirks a crooked smile and produces a Glock from her waistband and sets it next to Olivia's on the table. Olivia breathes out. She immediately has a list of questions she knows Sarah won't answer. She doesn't ask any of them.

It's not that she trusts Sarah or believes anything in particular about her--Sarah, after all, has neither asked for trust nor put forward any story for belief--but Olivia thinks there's something about Sarah she understands, the distance in her guarded expression and the carefully cryptic conversation. Sarah doesn’t speak but she doesn't look away either and Olivia thinks that maybe Sarah understands something about her too.

Either that, or the alcohol is clouding her judgment. Olivia doesn’t particularly care which.

She picks her gun up and Sarah follows her lead. If Sarah's fingers graze hers in the process, it might be accidental.

Olivia feels pleasantly blurred around the edges from the whiskey. Sarah's intent stare seems to bring her back into focus a little, and that feels pleasant too. She makes a decision and drains her drink. "I don't really want to go home," she says and it's as much as an invitation as she can bring herself to offer. Sarah's eyes hold hers but she doesn't answer. Olivia reaches over and without looking away, drains Sarah's drink too.

Sarah smiles slowly. "My place is empty," she says a little sadly, like maybe that wasn't always the case.

Sarah’s hotel is just around the corner. When they enter the room, Sarah shrugs her jacket off and tosses her gun on a nearby table and sits on the small, ratty couch. Olivia raises both eyebrows at the implied challenge and does the same. With the reserved wariness gone from Sarah’s face for now, Olivia can see a furious intensity in her, and now she knows what it is that she understands about Sarah.

Before Olivia can think any more deeply about it, they’re kissing. Neither is sure who starts it. Tomorrow Olivia will tell herself that she did, that she just wanted to lose herself in someone who doesn’t seem to want anything from her, just for a night. Tomorrow Sarah will tell herself the same thing.

For all her studied distance during the rest of the night, now Sarah is insistent, one hand in Olivia's hair, pressing firmly against the back of her head, the other hand already undoing the buttons on Olivia's shirt. Olivia doesn’t know if it’s the alcohol or the exhaustion of days of dealing with people walking on eggshells around her, but her reserve gives way to an insistence to match Sarah’s. She thinks maybe it's just Sarah, solid under her hands and tasting of whiskey on her tongue, obviously not uncomplicated, but so far undemanding in all ways but this.

They both keep their implicit bargain. If Sarah wakes later from a nightmare with an involuntary scream, Olivia stirs and curls towards her but doesn't wake. If Olivia jolts from her own dreams gasping and coughing like she's drowning, Sarah's hand on her hip doesn't acknowledge it. When Olivia slips out at dawn, feeling Sarah's eyes hot on her back, they both pretend Sarah is still sleeping.

When Olivia gets to her apartment, she immediately falls back into her bed and sleeps soundly there for the first time in weeks.


End file.
